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Professors call for fee and grant rethink

WE WRITE as university academics and others to express our grave concern at the government's abandonment of the principle of free higher education.

The existence of a funding crisis is not in dispute. It is long term and worsening. The Dearing report described the loss of resources over the past two decades as already having the potential to "damage the intrinsic quality of the learning experience which underpins the standing of UK awards".

What is in dispute is the government's failure to address this crisis in a principled way. The imposition of Pounds 1,000 tuition fees and the abolition of maintenance grants, if implemented, would represent the final reversal of the principle of free higher education - a principle established after the last war to ensure equality of opportunity and to create a better educated and more productive society. The government's own declared aim is to increase access and promote the culture of lifelong learning. Yet its actions point in the opposite direction. The maintenance loan, itself seriously inadequate, faces students with the prospect of long-term debt and is already deterring mature students and many from poorer families. The Pounds 1,000 tuition fee will deter many more. It has to be paid upfront, without any loan support, by all whose parents have a joint income of Pounds 350 per week or more. Far from solving the funding crisis it could, by deterring students, make matters worse. Higher education will still have to absorb the bulk of the projected deficit.

Our argument is simple. If education really is such a priority for this government, then it must recognise that it needs extra money from the state. It cannot be extracted from students. It will not come from the private sector. Nor is it any answer to shift resources from one over-stretched area of the education service to another. Funds for higher education must be found in a way that is socially equitable and that does not restrict, or end, the right to higher education. There is an answer. It is an obvious one in a country which has one of the least progressive tax systems in the developed world. It is to pay for higher education out of a more redistributive system of general taxation. Society needs universities. They will be fewer and worse unless they receive more cash now and in future. The proposed funding system is divisive, inefficient and socially regressive. We urge the government to think again.